So I saw this on Facebook, and it reignited my old worry about a global civil war.

On its face, there’s a lovely story here – people reacting against an awful, but still mostly fringe, belief. The arc of justice is long and all that.

That comment underneath, though? That’s a different thing. Don’t get me wrong, I recognize the feeling. I often feel the same way. I occasionally wonder if I should be learning to use a firearm, because it is obvious to me that we are at risk of widespread war in the next couple of decades, and I’m pretty sure that war, when and if it comes, will directly affect my loved ones.

But.

Fighting a war? A real, hot, firearms-and-death war? Particularly one that’s internal to our own society? That’s gonna destroy the tiny chance we have to accomplish the things we need to accomplish. Climate change mitigation is the big one there, but there are a lot of life-saving progress that will be lost to the dust bin of history if neighbours start shooting each other.

And that’s before we account for the possibility that in the event of civil war in the West, other powers might decide to extend their own power. Russia and China aren’t the monochrome villains we tend to paint them as, but they’re still run by folks who see the exercise of military power as a reasonable option in the age of nuclear weapons. War elsewhere makes that a much more viable proposition.

It doesn’t even matter which side you think would “win”, ultimately. If democratic societies cannot find their way through the maze of vice, corruption, and particularly social conflict, then democracy is going to join communism as a failed experiment. It’ll come back around, sooner or later, but if it falls to its own inability to negotiate basic compromises, its shiny promise will be forever tarnished.

I don’t even have a good answer for this threat. I feel certain, however, that aggressive posturing ain’t it.

I’m still hopeful that we can get there. The great thing about democracy is also the shitty thing about democracy: Nobody agrees 100%, so you always have to sweat the details. Literal Nazis are easy, but everything else is hard, and it’s likely that it will only ever get harder. And uglier. And less satisfying. But that long arc doesn’t bend all by itself.